Posts made by Jaunt

@Ganymede

The problem's arc isn't immediate. I'll use Shadows of Isildur as a good example of this.

SOI was created by a guy who was one of the originators of the "RPI" sub-genre. He was a good admin. He brought good staff with him. They were mostly good admins. No problems. They allowed staff to play PCs, and that became the culture at SOI.

After years of running SOI, though, that fellow (Traithe) had to pass his game on to someone else. Real life became too much for him. And so, Japheth took over. Japheth was a good admin. Most of Japheth's staff SEEMED like good admins. But, Japheth got a new job after a time, and it became evident that he, too, needed to pass the game onto someone else.

And so, a guy named Kite came into control of the game. Kite and his friends began doing some rather ... unsavory things on SOI. All of the sudden, his and his wife's clan took over an entire region, even though it didn't make sense. Staff PCs began to get extreme boosts to statistics, skill levels, equipment. They loaded up equipment for themselves. They stole player donations to the game and pocketed it. They plotted on their administrator chat on ways that they could kill off their characters' in-game rivals.

And then, there was the inevitable conflict with the playerbase. A mass exodus happened. Within a year, SOI went from having over 100 players on at its peak times to having fewer than 5 players on. It shut down. It's since re-opened under different leadership, but it's never recovered.

Now, Kite didn't look like a bad admin to Japheth. Sure, he played his PC a lot, but he didn't cheat until he took over the game.

I guess my belief is that people like Kite (and many of his fellow admins) wouldn't even be interested in running a game if they weren't able to also play PCs. I've never had a problem with admin cheating on my games since my philosophies have shifted, and I think that a big part of that is that the sort of staff that I recruit are dedicated first and foremost to administration of the game. That's what's fun for them.

The sort of person that cheats is also the sort of person that is going to do their best to hide the fact that they're that type of person. A lot of games change ownership. In the case that I ever change ownership, I want to pass on my philosophy, a culture where administrators are dedicated to that aspect of the community as opposed to their player characters, onto whomever might take over for me.

It's just one way to go about it, but I haven't had any issues since I've applied the approach, and it's definitely done a lot to generate a better relationship between staff and players for me.

@HelloProject

Yep. You're definitely right on the money. And like I said a few times, there's value in both commercial and non-commercial MU*s.

I do think that our corner of MUdome would benefit from some commercial representation, though, to draw in younger players that don't even know that you can roleplay online in any sort of meaningful way.

To my knowledge, there's never been a commercial RPI or MUSH. It's what we're working at with Redshift (using the Evennia Engine), and it's definitely the most challenging MU* that I've ever personally created because of it. Fun, though. Re-inventing the wheel in a more modern and hopefully improved/streamlined way has been a great undertaking for Apollo and I.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

It's not a monolith, just like I don't think anyone who's played RPIs would say they're overly monolithic, either (that's the impression from players of them not affiliated with OR who've commented in this thread, at least).

That's spot on. There's a lot of variance in terms of style, execution and policies -- in both communities.

@Groth said:

Most of those are concerns on many MUSHes as well. On our game every member of staff had access to every character sheet, every faction board, every player request etc, that makes any sort of conflict with a staff PC ludicrously one-sided before you even take into account deliberate cheating.

I do think those issues become even more problematic if a core feature of your game is non-consent permanent death. They're definitely not good mojo in either scenario, though.

@Groth

I agree in regards to player experience. We use a toolset that lets us snoop players to see their real-time input/output from their perspective. We use this to keep up on what folks are doing, but also to view gameplay and experience through their eyes. Additionally, a lot of us use tester ports to test gameplay pretty extensively before implementation. That helps, too.

I think for a MUSH, not letting administrators hold the positions of in-game power is a great step. That's usually the biggest problem with administrators playing PCs. For RPIs, because things like skill-gain and crafting are automated systems, and there is non-consentual permanent death, there are other problems too:

• Loading superior equipment for your character to use or sell.
• Changing your character's stat/skill sheets.
• Spying on other PCs that are in IC opposition to yours, to give you a meta-gaming advantage.

And many others, too. I definitely think there's more danger in staff playing PCs in non-MUSHes. And while I can regulate my own staff, largely, what happens if I take a leave of absence or move on to another project?

By finding staff that want to be staff more than they want to be players, I feel like I avoid getting the sort of "administrator" on my team that's motivation for climbing the ranks is largely to benefit himself. And having that policy definitely does a lot to increase players' trust in me.

In the RPI Community, many games have burned players with cheating issues. Players aren't as trusting as they were 10, 20 years ago. That's why, for me, it's better just to not take any chances at all.

This is gonna be a long post. That's only because I really liked what a lot of folks had to say yesterday, and there are a lot of separate thoughts and ideas to respond to.

TL;DR

• RPIs are great for adventure roleplaying. Dungeons and Dragons style loves RPI.
  MUSHes are great for more social roleplaying. World of Darkness style loves MUSH.
  They're both awesome types of games for their own reasons.

• Bad customer service sucks. Good customer service is personable, helpful, fair, but doesn't mean being a doormat or placing blame on the user. Good customer service is AWESOME.

• I'm not a robot, but if I say something that makes you think I am, feel free to tell me. I'm definitely curious as to how I might give you that impression. Should I use more contractions? Should I go back to insulting peoples' intelligence? : p Maybe it's just because I'm verbose.

Read on if you want more detail on the above summarizations. : p

@surreality said:

First, it's generally not an "I" creating a game. This may be assumed but it's worth noting it shouldn't necessarily be. I'm doing a fairly absurd amount of work putting one together now, but I am absolutely not doing it alone. (It's also worth noting that the people who are also contributing their time and energy to the project are folks I've met here for the most part, all of whom have contributed in equally important ways, from my perspective, just for the asking and some volunteered. Others provided advice and tutorials that helped get everything started.)

This is actually pretty big, and it's something that shouldn't be discounted.

That's pretty cool. I've always tended to create games, even MUSH, with a singular partner, not because I dislike working with a larger team, but because it's difficult to find folks who work at the same (crazed) pace that I do. I think that the idea of joint creation/responsibility is one of the cooler defining features of the MUSH community.

The reason I say it's a fusion of both is that, after swapping in 'staff's' for I in the first statement, it tends to be the case. I wouldn't, for instance, put this much time and energy into creating a game I had no interest playing on at some point as well.

This is very true in the other genres of MU*s, too. Not always true, but very often. While it's probably a bit less of a problem with MUSHes because of their social and (usually) non-automated combat systems, I do think it causes problems in other genres (like RPIs): when administrators are also players, I have seen the two following problems eventually destroy many games:

1. They are more dedicated to playing than programming/designing/creating. This is probably less of an issue with MUSHes, since the content creation is more of a communal aspect of the game.

2. Because they are so invested in their player characters, and they have the ability to do so, they cheat to get ahead. Cheating has always been a huge problem with MU*s, because there is an important trust-based relationship between player and admin. When that trust is destroyed, it very often ends up in an eventual player exodus, and it's really difficult to re-build.

That's why staff on my games don't play PCs. We test PCs for gameplay purposes, and we observe others' play, and we GM --- but that's something that I always feel strongly about. Even the perception of cheating (even when it might not be true) can ruin the trust between players and administrators in other MU* sub-genres.

Plus, I actually love GMing/scripting/world-build/administrating as much and even more than I do being a player. For me, the trick is finding folks to work with who feel the same way -- I want a staff that's happy, and it's completely valid that many would-be staff want to play the game that they create.

Here's why: when it comes to world-building, to do it well, you have to love those basic building block ideas enough to give them enough meat on their bones to provide story hooks in abundance, even the ones that have no appeal to you at all.

Absolutely! This is a big part of the RPI genre, too. Games that don't give players agency to build things, or go out and do things, or create plots of their own ... well, they tend to not do very well, comparatively. Supporting true player agency, whether automated, semi-automated, half-automated/half-manual, or entirely community built -- it's probably the most important design philosophy for MUSHes and RPIs.

Each of these approaches has its own benefits and drawbacks. The MOO version's story, to me, was considerably more limited, because attempts to tell any story other than hunting zombies there was severely impeded by constant invasions of respawning zombies. On the MUX version, people can more readily experience other stories in that space -- but they can't do so without a story-runner handy to run the zombies if they want to hunt zombies. To have anything worth doing there, they need information about the zombies if someone is willing and able to run them for others, but they also need a pile of alternate story hooks worth exploring.

Zombie Swamp sounds fun. I don't think that the MOO's version of the story needs to be more limited, though. It sounds like something that could be solved in design.

For instance, I like to design "mob spawning" to take player agency into account. In Atonement (which basically had Space Zombies for players to deal with), I created destructible spawning nests. These nests would regulate the repopulation speed and total population size of the Space Zombies. The nests would also create other nests if they weren't dealt with, and the new nests would be a little closer to the PCs' "safe zone" with each incarnation. If PCs decided to stay on the defensive, things would gradually get scarier and scarier. If PCs decided to be proactive, and delve deep into the derelict ship on patrols to find nests and destroy them, the safe became safer and they could expand the "safe/civilized" area outward.

But, I also built tools to stop the spawning, or to freeze combat so that we could roleplay scenes together. There was automated player agency to keep players engaged, and there was the ability for scenes of nothing but roleplay, and there was the ability for the later, followed by the former.

If you use automated combat as a feature, and your game cares about roleplay, it's definitely worth it to add in tools to stop automated combat, stop spawning, so that you can engage your players with the same sort of in-depth roleplay that they'd get without those automated systems.

In essence, I guess that I'm saying that the division between MUD and MUSH is best served when it's something of an amalgamation of the best of both styles. That's totally my preference and opinion, and don't expect others here to share it, necessarily. If you take the GM approach (where the GMs don't play, they just GM), then you can help support player-driven plots (while keeping a little more element of surprise in there for your players), you can help drive a branching, player-influenced meta-plot, and you can help create great scenes when you're around. But it's important to encourage folks to be proactive, and to give them agency, when you're not around. And so -- smartly-designed automated systems.

I like adventure RPGs. MUSHes do socially-oriented settings really well, but I think automated systems for player agency are a big boon for adventure-oriented games.

So, I totally agree with what you've said above! I think another important distinction between MUSH and RPI is that they tend to excel at two different types of roleplaying games: more socially-oriented RPGs vs more adventure-oriented RPGs. For instance, on Atonement, I do not think that players would have felt the anxiety of impending doom and danger quite so much if all encounters with zombies were player-run. The fact that permanent death was also included only furthered to increase an atmosphere of anxiety (it was a survival horror RPI, after all). The fact that the game itself was working against them at the same time that the story was developing created a tense environment that really fueled their roleplay.

Both types of RPGs are cool. Both styles of games are important to the community. I won't really speak to other types of MUDs, as their goals are distinctly different from RPIs/MUSHes, and they're much more about hacking and slashing (or PVP). Success for them is found in an entirely different way.

@surreality said:

The primary benefits I can see in the MUX approach are that a broader range of stories can be told in the same grid space, even if it takes work to provide the hooks to allow for this. It also means the players can find creative solutions at times to problems the code hasn't taken into account, and an automated system may not provide for.

True often, but I don't think it has to be true. RPIs also have dice-rolling mechanics for players to handle situations that automated code might not be able to take into account. And if GMs are good, they will be working to help players bring their plots to realization. I think that the main difference is that players get building tools on MUSHes, whereas on RPIs, players get in-character building crafts/scripts that GM Administrators support by helping those things come to realization, and player-developed plots require collaboration with a GM when something has to happen that goes beyond the player's toolset. It works very well when there is a great, active relationship between the staff and the player-base. It is obviously an annoying bottleneck for games that don't have an active staff.

And that's why the big difference between the two genres goes back to philosophy, I think:

MUSHes are created more communally. There is less of a divide between staff and players.

RPIs put a lot more responsibility on their staff to create content, including content that will immerse players when they're not expecting it.

It's an important distinction, but not a massive one.

@HelloProject said:

If you come off as -too- authoritative, it can make you difficult to approach.

Yep. I agree. I usually interact with my players in a pretty casual way, unless something needs to be super-official. I don't tell my players how to play their characters (I hate it when administrators try to be roleplay police). I don't throw the ban-hammer around at people who annoy me. I'm a big believer in the player experience, and being available to my players. I let them friend me on Facebook. I give them my AIM SN. I respond personally to every PM or petition. I chat with them about non-game stuff on my forums.

I think seeing your administrators as human beings that aren't so different than you, it helps players accept the times when administrators need to make decisions that not all players are going to like. It's that whole player/staff trust thing, again.

There are lots of ways to do customer service wrong. I see them in our community all the time. Unsurprisingly to you guys, probably, I'm the sort of player that won't stand up for staff abuse or staff cheating on games. I've gone to dukes with many administrators over the past 25ish years. Because of that, I'm the sort of administrator that is concerned (perhaps too much) with not allowing myself or my staff to cheat or abuse players, and if I have a staff member who sucks at customer service, then they don't interact OOC with the players.

As for other things you mentioned, there are things that we as a community could do re: promotion, that I don't really see done, like, almost ever. We promote within our own community, but I don't see people attempt to promote in other thriving communities of RP. I'd say that at this point, MUing is a small fraction of the role-players on the internet. There is a definite benefit to promoting outside of our community.

Yeah. It's really up to the individual game's leadership to do the following:

1. Create calls to action to encourage other admins and players to promote the game. Give them good leads on where to promote the game, and create some promotional material (fliers, banners, whatever it might be) that they can use.

2. Promote the game yourself.

Money definitely helps, but there are free options too.

So, yes, I believe it's possible to grow the hobby. I see new players drip into it all the time, despite cries of the hobby being dead/dying.

Definitely. I see new players frequently, too. I just know the laws of attrition will eventually tip things over to the point where the new players will be, less and less, not enough to make up for the loss of the old players. Because RP-focused games require such collaboration, the effect becomes somewhat exponential -- the smaller your game gets, the faster its user-base shrinks.

The good news is that it works the other way, too! Specifically targeting young people is gonna be really important for us if we wanna keep this thing going well into the future. That might not concern everyone, but it's definitely a concern to me.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Frankly, to me, the majority of yours, Jeshin's, and crayon's posts have read like radio instructions to me. ie. they're very dry and technical and my interest wanes pretty quickly after that.

Parched dissertations. Ouch. I can accept that, though. This is the sort of conversation that I enjoy having. If it's boring to you, I'm not gonna hold it against you. But I'm also not gonna worry more about entertaining than I am about digging deep into ideas, because that's not what I'm personally here for. I save my fucked up sense of humor for chatrooms and real life, usually. : p

As to MU*ing and 'customer service skills'... I am a CSR. Its what I do. Do I want to log out of my work and go... deal with more work? Not particularly.

I get that. But somebody needs to do the work, right? Even if it's not you?

It tends to be scripted, with a few specific responses geared towards a particular end (getting to the next customer, keeping people sticking with your company for the least amount of actual effort, etc.).

You talk about customer service skills like there's something good about them. Here's your average set of customer service skills: Automatic deflection of fault onto the customer. Meaningless apologies to cover ineptitude. An inability to actually achieve the result sought because you lack the proper authority. Being shunted around to 3-5 different people for the same problem. Being forced into horrific wait times on any and everything because only one person knows how to actually fix half the problems.

Yes! You're absolutely right. Customer service CAN be terrible and impersonal. It doesn't have to be, though. To me, the techniques that are important to me are as follows:

Problem: User complains. Instead of getting defensive, or dismissive, or being a doormat for them to walk over, I try to approach things like this...

1. Hear their complaint. Consider what you know about them. Try to understand what is actually motivating their complaint (do they have irrational issues with another player? Do they have a misconception about something that happened? Did their dog just die? Are they a constant troll? Why are they a constant troll?) Ask questions if you need to.

2. Tell them that you understand their complaint in the simplest way possible. It doesn't need to sound cold. "Hey man, I hear what you're saying. Kestrel has been spreading rumors about your character that isn't true, and it's making it hard for you to find people to roleplay with. That's making the game less fun for you. Yeah?"

3. Then tell them what you're going to do about it (or what they should do about it). This doesn't mean giving into them, because sometimes what you're going to do about it is "nothing". I might say about the above situation: "Cool. I understand how frustrating that is. Even if Kestrel does have it out for you, though, he's only acting in character. I can't punish him for that. I'll keep an eye on the situation to see if meta-gaming is happening, but here's what I want you to try for me: try to turn that IC conflict into something meaningful. Maybe the rumors about your character ARE true: maybe this is your chance to play an antagonist. Or, maybe your character decides to fight back with rumors of his own. Think about Game of Thrones; is there a way to approach this that would be fun, politically, and might win characters back over to your character's side? If all else fails, and you just can't find a new way forward for your character, it's okay to shelf him for a bit and play a different character. And when you bring this character back, bring him back with a bang."

To me, that's good customer service for our sort of game. It's personable, it's helpful, and most of all: it shows that you care about your users and that you listen to them. At the end of the day, most people who complain just want to know that their concerns are truly, honestly being heard.

@Sunny said:

ETA: tl;dr Be a person, not a robot. We have our robot already and like him. We do not need two!

I definitely don't understand how I'm acting like a robot. I'm a really offensive robot, if so. : p

I'm verbose, but that's just me. Beyond my content push for October, I'm not marketing speaking you folks.

If I say something robotic, lemme know. It'd help me to understand how what I'm saying is actually being perceived. I try to write logically when I argue, because that's what I've learned to be most effective ... but I'm a pot-smoking, liquor-loving, bar-tending, hippy actor/director/writer/game-maker and all around nerd. In reality, I'm probably a lot more chill than you perceive me to be.

@HelloProject said:

Presenting yourself as approachable, but keeping the customer service tools in the back of your mind for when they're actually necessary, is really a good balance.

I agree with this 100%!

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Here's your average set of customer service skills: Automatic deflection of fault onto the customer. Meaningless apologies to cover ineptitude. An inability to actually achieve the result sought because you lack the proper authority. Being shunted around to 3-5 different people for the same problem. Being forced into horrific wait times on any and everything because only one person knows how to actually fix half the problems.

Yeah, that sounds awful. It's totally not what I'm talking about, though. I'll go more in depth on what I meant in my next post.

@surreality and others:

Some really interesting stuff. Just wanted to throw out that I'll be unavailable the rest of today, but I'm looking forward to talking more about this stuff when I've some free time tomorrow.

@WTFE

And how you feel in regards to it is totally understandable. I think of games (and MU*s) as an art form. A lot of folks do argue that they just aren't as relevant any more, and will only become less relevant in the future. I think that that can be true, but that it doesn't necessarily have to be true.

I'll point at Opera again. Why the hell are people still watching baroque operas from the early 1600s? Theatre before the mid-1800s didn't even have subtext; characters always said, back then, exactly what they meant. Most people can't easily relate to 1600s European politics or its social climate. So, how has Opera survived?

Well, it's adapted. It's promoted itself, aggressively. And while I don't think that it's a strong approach to good storytelling, I'm glad; Opera has its own sort of unique beauty. And it's survived by the support of a small, but passionate minority. There are plenty of older art forms (whether it's visual art, performance art, or literature) that have not survived. And that's a shame.

I see MU*s, and RPIs/MUSHes in particular, the same way. There isn't a real replacement for the sort of storytelling that we do here. I think it's important, and that's why I feel the way that I do.

@HelloProject

That's a really good, interesting point. It's something that I've definitely thought about.

MUSHes are really about creating co-operative interactive fiction (through roleplay). They use soft-code to let players have the ability to do things that other games would only allow GMs to do. And so, because of that, there's less of a sense of "I created this game, I'm responsible for this game, and other people are players" and more of a sense of "I created this game so that I can play it with other people, and we're all responsible for it."

I definitely get that.

Do you think, though, that a MUSH would benefit and grow if it was led by an administrator with a good sense of customer service promoting their community/game to new potential players? Or available to help new players overcome the learning curve by using customer service techniques? Or responsible for addressing player concerns with customer service techniques?

Do you think that you can hold onto the sense of "we're a relaxed group of friends writing fiction and roleplaying together", and still benefit from taking a customer service approach when something needs to be official?

I don't think the two ideas need to be mutually exclusive. I think that there are great times to be casual and accessible, and important times to be official. I've said it before, but:

What happens in 10-20 years when most of us aren't doing this anymore? Is it important for us to pass the torch? If so, how can we build a big enough community of young people to take over our hobby for the next generation?

@Coin said:

Then you're not really going to get through to us in the way you seem to want. Just how it is.

That's fair, and I appreciate the honesty.

@Coin

I don't mind arguing. In fact, I love it. What I meant was that I don't feel confident that any conversation I have on this board will be about the ideas that I'm arguing instead of about me, personally.

Case in point, we're still talking about me right now. But, since we are, I'll clarify.

I'm just not interested in doing "this" over multiple threads. So, whether or not I will "integrate" has more to do with my perception than it does yours. If I think that there's value for me in taking part in other threads, then I'll definitely do so.

But, I'm a busy guy. I'm working on two games, a graphic novel, I perform and I direct, I program and I preach on multiple communities (usually with better results than I've had here, so far). I have a deep wealth of experience (as a player and as a programmer and a designer) in many sub-genres of our communities, including this one. I'm progressive. I'm actually sort of an awesome person to have in your community, in most cases.

But I'm not sold on getting more involved with MSB than this thread, yet. My perception of whether or not this thread can generate the sort of discussion that I'd actually be into spending MORE of my limited free-time pursuing is the sticking point for whether or not I'll become more involved with MSB.

I don't think it's the end of the world for me, or for you, if I don't. For the time being, I'm investing an hour or so a day into MSB via this thread, so that I can make that call.

That's a significant investment for me.

@Coin said:

I think the basic premise here is that none of the Optional Realities crowd (except maybe @Jeshin?) have interacted with the rest of the community on any thread other than this one; and even if they have here and there, not to an extent that it's noticeable and makes them feel part of the community.

So if you want to be part of the community, you need to actually, you know, take part in it, not just the very small sub-section of it that promotes your own thing elsewhere.

My feeling is this. Until I feel like I'm able to have a conversation with folks here without it going off the rails and becoming personal, I'm not going to shit up your other threads with my outsider opinions when it's just going to offend people. If I feel like this thread can be steered back towards positivity, then I'll be likely to branch out.

@Miss-Demeanor

Oh, and whether or not you can grow a thick skin. That's one thing that's pretty much a requirement around here. We snark. We flame. We yell and curse and argue.

It's not about whether or not my skin is thick enough, to me. I'm very capable of giving as good as I get.

I just am not interested in that style of discussion, if the point is actually about discussion. I'm interested in thoughtful discussion that isn't marginalized by flaming. I know that that doesn't jive with this community's philosophies sometimes, but that's my perspective on things.

Currently, I'm going to try to see if I ignore flaming, whether or not that will help keep discussion on topic. I've tried a few other tactics. We'll see how this goes.

but if that's the ONLY thing you ever talk about eventually it'll get boring to people.

Do you feel as though my last two (large) posts were only about OR, or do you feel like I'm trying to discuss larger issues that affect this community too? The later is certainly what I'm trying to do.

I still feel like the ideas that I'm posting about are being overlooked as the conversation continues to be about me, specifically ... which is honestly far less interesting than the future of our genre.

@WTFE said:

My reaction to you right now is not territorial protector mode. It's anti-sales&marketing mode.

Do I come off like a salesman? Granted, I do have a marketing/fundraising background in real life (specifically for the theatre companies I work for), but I wasn't aware that this was a perception of me on this board.

I think the idea that some folks here are so adamantly anti-marketing is interesting. I can relate to a certain extent. I hate commercials. Because I hate commercials, I only use streaming services that don't have commercials to watch television and movies now.

But, there's two sides of the coin to me. You have corporate advertisement, in which corporations follow a formula of throwing money at saturating the market until they sneak into viewers' subconsciousness (there are a few great documentaries out there on how and why this works). Most corporate advertisements aren't even "on topic" or useful in terms of content, because all that really matters is that you think of them first when you're at the store and need to buy cleaning products, or paper towels, or electronics.

But then there is also grassroots marketing, used by small companies. I think about the theatre again. There's just no way that the theatre could survive without a robust attempt at marketing; I do believe it's the same way for games, and for our genre.

The MUSH community has stayed tight-knit over the years, and has been much less prone than other MU* communities to promote beyond their borders. But, what if you did promote more? What if we did advertise more? What if the most brilliant, progressive, hobby-saving minds out there aren't ours, but are the people who don't even know that we exist yet?

What happens in another 10-20 years, when the majority of us are too old and too busy to continue to keep this hamster wheel turning for free anymore?

This goes back to my firm belief that we need to invest in recruiting a younger generation, and in sizable numbers. It's easy to not look ahead, but watching the slow decline of MU*s over-time, I can't help but to look ahead. I want us to survive, even improve and grow (because more players = more interaction, more collaboration, more roleplay).

I think that that demands some marketing here and there.

You want in? You want respect?

I actually just want to have good discussions about subjects more meaningful than what sort of person I am, based on peoples' limited interactions with me. It's like people focusing on anti-candidate smear propaganda (whether true or not) in Presidential debates. I don't care about that stuff. I want to hear about things that actually matter to the greater populace as a whole.

@Thenomain

If you believe that there's value in attempting to revitalize our genre by re-branding and trying to create a professional product that's more likely to draw new, younger players to us, then I think that considering professionalism in regards to communities that you run or games that you own/work for is important. It's expected, in the rest of the world.

Sure, the "community as a board of directors" analogy doesn't do anything for me, and it's not something that I personally believe ... but I do think that there is value in good customer service. Just like I think promotion is important. Why?

Because they've both proven, universally, to increase "customer" retention. And for us, I think retention's super important. Nah, there's nothing cool about customer service or advertising. MUSHes have a bit of a counter-culture within the larger community, which is cool.

Do I think that MUSHes would draw and keep more players, over the long run, if they promoted themselves more and had good systems for customer service? Yeah, of course. Those tactics work for everyone, anywhere.

@Sunny said:

I don't really have much to say about the other things noted, except 'what do you mean an interactive fiction game'?

Interactive Fiction is sort of the granddaddy of all of our genres. Strangely enough, it's seeing a resurgence right now, partially thanks to mobile publishing platforms, and folks are producing numerous professional IF again, in quantity.

While it can vary greatly in style, depending on the story, you have two basic forms:

The Text-Adventure: these are the games that inspired MUDs (games like 'Zork' and 'Colossal Caves'). They're basically single-player MUDs, often with a focus on problem solving and puzzles and exploration (though not always).

The Gamebook: these are like Choose Your Own Adventures or Fighting Fantasy. Sometimes, they have simple tabletop-like RPG mechanics for rolling dice to resolve simplified combat. Sometimes they are just a series of choices. Gamebooks, in particular, vary in style greatly.

Arguably the easiest way to create such a game (without programming experience) is with this free engine: http://textadventures.co.uk/quest/

There are two versions of the Engine. One's geared more towards Text-Adventures. One's geared more towards Gamebooks.

I think that a lot of MUSH folks dig IF. I know that RPI folks do. Some of the interactive novels/games out there are really rather brilliant. I'd encourage you to google 'Interactive Fiction' ... you'll find an endless number of free games you can try out over the web.

Hope that answers your question sufficiently.

@BetterJudgment said:

Or feel that they are important. It's all game-playing in one form or another, and this "I'm a professional" schtick is part of the administrator game. It's a business simulator without the risks of running a real business.

I wish that that were true, sometimes. There are some very real risks for what we're doing, precisely because we are a business. We don't make any money off of Optional Realities (that's not a business), but the game REDSHIFT is a professional endeavor. We're paid a regular rate for it. There's real capital invested, and real risk being taken. To be fair, that risk is largely @Jeshin's. However, we both believe (as I talked about earlier) that it's important for our genre that new, high quality, "professional" games are released. I think it's the best way to attract young, new players for the next generation.

@Sunny

What do you think of the discussion posted/quoted above? Or the October OR content share with MSB?

@TNP

Totally fair. You've got it, then.

When last we were productive, a content post talking about the Evennia MU* Engine, OR's September "Design-an-Antagonist" Contest results, and OR's October "Write a Short Interactive Fiction Game" contest had been posted. It eventually branched off into a discussion about the potential value in exploring for-profit MU*s ...

@il-volpe said:

I don't think we need revenue to advertise the hobby. We just need better newbie support, more different kinds of games, and to take advantage of free advertising among table-top and play-by-post RPGers.

@Jaunt said:

I think that those things are important, too. But I don't think that they're going to sustain the genre in the long-term, as we continue to get older. Table-top gaming is likely to move, more and more, onto online platforms like Roll20. The play-by-post community is shrinking even faster than we are.

It's something that I can compare to real life work that I do. I perform/direct frequently for two different theatre companies. One of those companies does "edgy" plays and Rock & Roll musicals -- the average age of their patron is around 30-45. The other company does Opera -- the average age of their patron is probably 50-65. The age at which most patrons stop seeing theatre is between 65-70, for both companies.

Guess what the Opera company's number one goal is? Market penetration to younger audiences, and re-branding what they do to be more appealing to younger audiences. They know that if they don't do this, then the Opera will die. It's basically the same for Opera companies around the world.

It's the same for MU*s. We have to ask ourselves two important questions.

1. How can I market to a younger audience? The most obvious answer is to penetrate the video game market, to get press from popular blogs and magazines, to cast a wide enough net that people actually know that we exist.

2. How can I appeal to a younger audience? I believe we should be considering things like beautifying our game clients through MUSHclient plugins, or significantly improved web-clients. Create intuitive links between gameplay to helpfiles, engaging and immersive character generation and industry quality tutorials. Most of all, I think we need to find a catchier way to brand ourselves to them. Right now, for Redshift (for instance), I'm considering calling our game "an online tabletop RPG", and I've taken that branding to heart in my design of the game (by creating a tabletop like interface with the GUI and a tabletop-like combat system instead of a standard DIKU-like room-based system).

The solutions are going to be different for every game, but I don't think that we can afford to soft-ball our marketing attempts and expect to see a big change.

You hear the phrase "you have to spend money to make money" a lot in the world. It's relatively true. In our case, though, it's more like "you have to make money to spend money to attract a future generation of players". Unless you're independently wealthy --- I know that I'm not.

@Tyche said:

That's not at all accurate. This restriction appears to be limited to only DikuMuds and some LPmuds. It certainly never affected Aber, Mush, Muck, MOO, or the 50+ other mud servers released (many of them Dikumud clones).

In fact, most of the older mud engines were created specifically for commercial use.

@Jaunt said:

That's actually a rather contested point, and not just in our community. The Artistic License can be rather tricky when it comes to using it to make money, particularly because of how the code in the old engines has come from all different kinds of sources.

I was not able to find a single instance of a pay-to-play (via a one time cost, annual cost, microtransaction-based, merchandising, or any other type of model) MUSH anywhere on the net. Have there been professional attempts at MUSHes before? If so, can you link me to them, because I'd be very interested in learning more about them.

@ThugHeaven said:

I knew the pay to play thing was going to be a focal point. Posting from my phone, so I'll be brief. I think that model is a bad idea for many reasons. Even if we're just talking about rpi's, I don't think the quality of rp justifies paying for it. People are going to expect and want things for paying.....eventually you're going to give it.

I could go on and on, but please don't monetize your new mud.

@Jaunt said:

There were some frightening things that I learned about Atonement (an old RPI of mine) when it ended and I did some calculations. Important to note is that idling is less of a thing on RPIs than on MUSHes, generally. Without some sort of trigger, RPIs will log players out if they idle for more than 15 minutes or so. There were players that, over three years, spent up to and over 50% (ON AVERAGE) of their waking day playing Atonement. The average play-time for its players far exceeded the average amount of time players spend playing games like WOW or Guild Wars 2. Can you think of many other types of game that people play for free for 4-8+ hours a day? Do you think it's unfair to ask players to spend $5 a month for their unlimited (which might reach 300 hours+) play on your game?

I don't. And I think people are largely reasonable enough to agree. We live in the Era of Microtransactions, where people are willing to throw silly amounts of money to buy virtual goods for social-based games, without a second thought. $5 is less than the cost of a Happy Meal. $5 is less than the cost of a pack of smokes. $5 is less than the cost of a movie ticket. $5 is about the cost of a buying a single episode of a television show (that gives you 21-60 minutes of entertainment) off of I-Tunes.

It's actually extremely reasonable when you think about it like that, IMO.

I agree that the quality of RP alone isn't enough to justify a "professional game". I think that you need to spend time on the bells and whistles. You need an engine without legacy problems, that's stable and modern. You need a game that LOOKS good, even if that just means a simple GUI that's going to be attractive (and, preferably, immersive). You need a pay system that's fair for players, but doesn't entitle them to more than what it's designed to. You need administrative policies that protect players from the too frequent corruption of abusive staff.

If your point was just to make enough money to help promote your game, a one-time fee after a first, free month of play might work. Or maybe you charge $5/month, or $2/month, or you have aesthetic only microtransactions, or whatever is going to work best for your game and community. You don't need to rob players blind like IRE and Simultronics do (though they've proven that players will still play anyways, I think most of us can agree that they're exploitative and overly corporate).

If 200 players pay $2/month, that's $400/month that you have to spend on advertising. Not only that, the fact that your game is pay-to-play actually makes you much more likely to be able to get reviewers from big sites and magazines to come check out your game, and hopefully promote it.

I think that that's important. It's not for every game. For instance, if you're using a shared IP (Middle-Earth, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, etc), obviously your options are limited. Thankfully, part of the benefit of using shared IP is that you have extra means to market your product to a younger audience already. It's another viable option.

@WTFE said:

If you need persuasion, go look at the clusterfuck that was Skotos' batch of pay-to-play RPIs.

@Jaunt said:

Skotos' games were not RPIs. They also were terrible, and that's why Skotos failed. Their administration was often corrupt, their games were sub-par, and their marketing tactics were lazy and ineffective. They only had initial success, at all, because of the fact that they were "professional". When they couldn't meet expectations, they lost that good will.

Counter-point: Simultronics and IRE. While I don't like their pay-to-win approach, they've dominated for so long, largely in part due to their very attractive interfaces, reasonably high quality games (for their genres), more professional approach to administration and customer service, and far superior attempts at marketing to younger audiences and penetrating the video-game market.

There are success stories and failures. I don't think going P2P is for everyone. It's definitely more work. I do think it's worth considering. I do think it's necessary for some of us to do it if we're going to keep our genre alive, overall, well into the future.

... to which @ThugHeaven and I briefly conversed before the thread went off-topic ...

@ThugHeaven said:

@Jaunt I'm just saying the average RPI has about 20-25 players, some less. Many of which actually are idle or sitting at a tavern or pretty much unfindable in some way (you know what I mean there).

I'm sure a few people will pay to play....but well, good luck with that.

@Jaunt said:

Well, for me, I just have faith that I'll be able to attract a larger group of players. Part of that is my experience with marketing, and part of that is that I've always been able to do it in the past, and part of it is my belief in my product being a significant step forward for the RPI genre.

I also tend to build my worlds in such a way to encourage roleplay and interaction, and to reduce the separation of players. You've gotta learn from the past, and like many of the MU* genres, I believe that RPIs are often-times stuck to certain design tendencies that are counter-intuitive and hurt them in the long run.

And I'd be very interested in discussing any of the above -- whether it be OR content that is relevant to MSB, or the pros/cons and considerations of for-profit MU*s in the modern/indie gaming world.

ETA: Sorry for the re-edits. Quoting problems.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

When I say you're acting like Spider, what I mean is that you say things that are designed to be irritating and obnoxious while not really stepping over the line into outright rudeness.

Thanks for the clarification, and I mean that. Your perception of my intentions, while understandable based on your previous experiences, isn't correct though. I'm not Spidering you. I have felt like @Thenomain is Spidering me, though. He ended last night by assuring me that he isn't. That's why I said this:

@Jaunt said:

The truth, as is the way of things, is likely in the middle somewhere.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

You don't know us. You have no context for this group as a whole. Motivations, shared history, you were never part of any of that. But you still insist on sitting there and talking about how we're the ones that don't understand and don't comprehend.

I don't know you as well as I know some other sub-sets of the greater MU* community, but I do know you. I did take part (albeit, much more quietly and to less of a polarized response towards me) in WORA back in the day. I have run MUSHes before. I do keep up on current MUSHes. I have read the entirety of this thread, multiple times, and I have read many other threads on this site since I started posting here a few weeks ago.

I'm also super willing to not have aggressive conversations. I'd rather prefer it. I've made many calls to action in regards to finding common ground, because I do think that there's value in more positive interactions between our communities. I've gone as far as to purposefully create content on OR that I think would be meaningful to MSB.

But, my polite and positive approach has limitations. My reactions over the past couple of days to @Thenomain (and once, to @Sunny) stemmed from my perception of persistent aggression despite my attempts to try to keep things civil and positive. Re-read my quotes on my post above, and you'll see that that's what I was trying to do.

I'm not saying that I'm without fault. I'm confident to the point of being arrogant sometimes. I know it. When I argue, I argue hard. Since I'm not an "insider" here, I'm told that that's perceived more poorly than it would be otherwise. I'm also very much dedicated to making the MU* community a better place. I've been dedicated to it for a long time.

I am all about moving forward and beyond this shitstorm. If you go back and read the past five or six pages of this thread with that in mind, I think that you'll see my attempts to do so. But my tolerance to being trolled here is not without its limitations. That's probably because I'm a proud guy. Another fault.

But I'm just not interested in participating in the pretense of "You have to let us knock you around until we decide that you're one of us." I don't find any value in hazing rituals. I do find value in good discussions, and I do get frustrated when the potential for good discussion is abandoned for focusing on personal attacks.

So, again, I propose that we move the conversation back to Optional Realities, and the subject matter of our October content share. That's not me taking the high road -- that's me trying to make a positive change in a thread that's unnecessarily mired in "he said, she said, he's a dick, you're a dick" garbage.

And that includes my own garbage too. I think that we can all do better here.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Anyone else notice that @Jaunt pulled a Spider with the picking just enough to cause an explosion then standing back and playing the 'high road' card? Or the use of 'well-meaninged'? I gotta admit, that bugs me more than the trolling. Not a real word.

Do you feel like that's the case, objectively?

Do you feel as though it's possible that my response was because I posted this after taking days in an attempt to be considerate of posting "the right way" here:

@Jaunt said:

After discussion, we've decided that we'll be posting to MSB to promote Optional Realities in the > following way, from now on:

We'll post within the first week of each month, only with links to content on OR that we believe
will be interesting to MSB users. Each piece of linked content will be described in a way that
explains why that content might be of interest to you, as a MSB user.

** ETA: October 2015's Optional Realities News for MSB**

Attempt to share relevant content per the suggestions of MSB users

"Your Cthulu" Monster/Antagonist Contest Results

Attempt to share relevant content per the suggestions of MSB users

October Contest: Create a Short Interactive Fiction Game

Attempt to share relevant content per the suggestions of MSB users

And the reaction I got was:

@Thenomain said:

@Thenomain said:

@Jaunt said:

One of the biggest issues with older MU* Engines is their restrictive licensing.

... What?

Seriously. What?

@Thenomain said:

@Jaunt said:

for-profit games

Are we going to try to do that, again?

This is a major issue?

I'm still on my "seriously, what?" thought.

@Jaunt said:

@Thenomain said:

@Jaunt said:

for-profit games

Are we going to try to do that, again?

This is a major issue?

I'm still on my "seriously, what?" thought.

That's my opinion, for sure. Generating profit to help promote and advertise our genre, and perhaps cut down on administrative burn-out by paying administrators at least some money, is something that I think is important.

If you disagree, that's cool. Evennia's worth taking a look at for other reasons, too.

And that I didn't start actually rolling up my sleeves at all until after this:

@Thenomain said:

I didn't see a point being made greater than:

That's my opinion

Making this not a discussion, but a slap-fight. Who is the more foolish between the two engaged in same?

Really, you seem to me to be defending something that isn't what I was asking about, leading me back to "know your audience".

---

Providing a bit more context:

I think that our reliance on pure hobbyism has contributed to our population decline

This is a decent point, but I don't see the lack of for-pay options as a major issue. I think the lack of decent for-pay games being an issue, as we can crank out something just as good, if not much better, than I've ever seen on the pay side.

Evennia's a rather good means to broach creating a professional MUSH. I can't say that nobody here, a community full of MUSH developers, would be interested in that. Can you?

I can also not say that there's no invisible purple unicorn, nor a teapot halfway between here and the moon. Can't remember the name of this logical fallacy. Asking someone to prove the absence of something, or that they can't prove the absence of something means that it's probative, is a dick move.

My goal was to share content that I think would be interesting or valuable to MSB users. I think it (at least, partially) worked.

And I think burying the lede was important enough to point out. You also created your own content for an article that had nothing to do with the above. Both of these things are, in my opinion, sad things to want to do.

If you're interested in what licensing and profit in the Mu* (mud and mush) world, write an article about it. I'd be interested in the conversation it would kick up.

Do you think it's possible that I felt like I went out of my way to try to do something specifically "right" for this site, only to feel like I was being marginalized by @Thenomain's ... less than co-operative response?

Maybe he's right. Maybe he didn't mean to be offensive. Maybe I incorrectly attributed his intentions. I can't really know that for sure.

All I have are context clues, and so far, context tells me that we're much more interested in personal blasting here than we are in engaging in actual conversation about content and ideas. That's pretty frustrating to me, as I'm constantly told that I'm a bad guy because I don't want to engage in discussion -- yet the only discussion that seems to persist on this thread is the one about how bad of a guy I am.

Step back. Turn off territorial protector mode. Consider the alternative. Maybe we can just talk to each other and share ideas between two communities without it becoming some sort of silly internet war.

@Thenomain said:

I don't know if he enjoys crow as much as I do, though.

I've given you props for being right several times, and made adjustments based on those times where you were. That's eating crow enough for my tastes.

Just like you likely don't believe that I see all of the times that I'm wrong, I probably don't believe that you see the times that you're wrong. The truth, as is the way of things, is likely in the middle somewhere.

@surreality

It's not like that isn't fair. I'm just too old, and I've been around too long, to care about that sort of pretense. Either my arguments and my energy speak for themselves, or they don't. I'm not going to be anyone else here but myself, and I'm not going to be anything else here but honest.

Either you like that, or you don't. That's cool with me.

But I think the better conversation to have on this thread is about Optional Realities, and how it relates to MSB. For instance, I'd be very interested in seeing the MUSH community here get involved in the October Short IF Game Contest that I promoted in this month's content push to MSB. I think that seeing the difference in how someone from a MUSH background might approach IF differently than someone from an RPI background would be super interesting.

I'd also love to get more than the handful of developers already working on MUSHlike adaptations of Evennia involved with that project, because I think Evennia's one of the most important things happening in the greater MU* community right now. I'm interested in conversation in regards to the pros/cons of considering P2P MU*s, too.

@Thenomain

See, I'm just not interested in having this aggressive of a discussion with you. I know that you know that. I know that you don't care.

I'm smug. Check. (a lot of folks here, including yourself, are)

I'm selfish. Check. (I'm selfish on behalf of the OR community, because I think it's a great community with some important ideas and connections, and I want it to thrive)

I'm also not interested in flinging around insults and name-calling today. If you want to talk about some meaningful ideas, like some of the posters on the rest of this page have, I'm all about it. I'm not going to respond to anymore 'you vs me' crap today, and I'm not going to join you in escalating the insults.

It's just getting sort of boring.

@Thenomain

You cherry-picked one thing in a rather substance-full post to pick on while ignoring the rest. I've since explained my stance on it several times, and haven't seen any attempts to refute those stances from you.

Being a nice guy doesn't mean letting you try to pass off antagonism as something that's well-meaninged when it's actually an attempt by you to marginalize myself and Optional Realities here on MSB.

I'm not talking past you, you've just persisted in not engaging me in reasonable conversation. In short, you've baited me so that you can move this thread off-topic. It's a Catch 22 for me, because people here seem to think that if I don't dignify your bait-and-switch tactics with specific responses, it means that I'm not willing to discuss things. That's not the case, or else I wouldn't be here ... discussing things.

So, continue to bait me if you'd like. I'll respond to you as much as is warranted, and probably a little more so than what's warrented just to show that I'm willing to play the game that seems to be standard here. And when you make a good point (you've done so a couple of times), I'm happy to accept that point for what it is and make changes. Because I'm pretty reasonable.

And I'll still post meaningful content when I have something to share.

You might've noticed, though, that the rest of the conversation (besides my back-and-forth with you) has moved onto something actually meaningful. I'd much prefer that. As a moderator of this site, I would hope you would too.